by Mary Ellen Daneels, Lead Teacher Mentor

Every Monday from 6-7 p.m., social studies teachers from across the nation gather on Twitter to deliberate essential questions related to their craft on #sschat. The #sschat facilitators have declared this month “Novinquiry” as all discussions are designed to support student centered inquiry in the classroom.

What does a great current and controversial issue discussion that engages students across differences look like, feel like and sound like?

What are your “go to” resources for inquiry that prepares students for these conversations?

What do we gain from difference in the classroom? What do we lose without it?

What would you say to a teacher that avoids controversies in the classroom because they fear being perceived as being too political?

How do you move students towards better arguments: From arguing to win, to deliberating for a shared, better understanding?

How do we find opportunities for difference in our classrooms when we are geographically and politically polarized?

How do we honor students’ identities and lived experiences within the inquiry process?

As an educator, I value the opportunity to use #sschat to enhance my own practice with candid discourse around the opportunities and challenges of being a social studies teacher in the 21st century. The exchange to the right is just a snippet of the conversations and connections that occur each week. Participants share wonderings, successes, struggles, and most importantly, strategies and resources—the best kind of PD!

The day will begin with and opening plenary hosted by Dr. Diana Hess to address the opportunities and challenges in engaging students in dialogue in an era of political polarization. Workshop sessions that follow will highlight how deliberation, student voice and informed action can be leveraged to connect classrooms across cultural, geographic, and socio-economic differences to promote culturally sustainable teaching. The day will conclude with Eric Liu from Citizen’s University hosting the first ever Better Arguments Project in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves and the Aspen Institute. For more information on this strand of learning, visit the online guidebook.

How are you celebrating “Novinquiry?” Please comment below. Together, we can prepare all students for college, career and civic life.

Wineburg recounts this work within a larger, book-length narrative about the current challenges of teaching history titled Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) [University of Chicago, 2018]. He begins by documenting century-long concerns about the lack of historical knowledge among our youth and the population as a whole. In modern times, the sporadic National Assessment of Education Progress in History reveals low levels of historical proficiency among students, results designed by modern tests to produce a predictable distribution of results.

These tests, and our obsession with declarative knowledge about history and civics, distract us from more meaningful ways to teach and learn about history. It’s true that the modern textbook, while more inclusive than in the past, provides superficial, even inaccurate, accounts of history, and it remains central to many current classrooms. Some teachers have experimented with alternative accounts of history like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (Harper & Row, 1980), but Wineburg is sharp in his critique of Zinn’s own one-sided and empirically-thin tome.

The key, according to Wineburg, isn’t to seek truth through a plethora of ideological and superficial sources, but instead engage students in the process of historical thinking and debate through examination of primary documents and accounts of pivotal events. SHEG has gained incredible traction among social studies teachers using this approach, and the pivot to critical online literacy is natural given that history (and seemingly everything that is knowable) is “Googled.”

The challenge of teaching history in the Information Age centers on discerning the accuracy of sources accessible in a millisecond at the command of our fingertips. It’s true that students are digital natives and have mastered the intuitive features of their handheld devices. The natural reaction of teachers who are a generation or two older is admiration and delegation. But we mistakenly conflate students’ digital prowess with their ability to scrutinize the sources they are encountering.

SHEG’s critical online literacy assessments are helpful to this end and have since been integrated into the work of media literacy organizations like the Center for News Literacy in partnership with Maine East High School in Park Ridge, IL. SHEG is also busy designing a curriculum to assist teachers with classroom instruction called MediaWise. It will be tested in partnership with the Poynter Institute in classrooms across the country in the coming months.

Teacher professional development has long been central to the McCormick Foundation’s work in Illinois to strengthen school-based civic learning, and we plan to recommend a grant to SHEG in February to develop online teacher professional development modules for dissemination of the MediaWise curriculum.

Wineburg’s book is a must-read for social studies teachers and other educators seeking to integrate media literacy across the curriculum. The parallel work he oversees at SHEG is also of utmost importance and should be immediately considered for classroom adoption. Perhaps ironically, historians have a great deal to offer in helping to navigate the Information Age. Tried and true tactics of multiple, primary source scrutiny translate incredibly well to the digital domain.

by Shawn P. Healy, PhD, Democracy Program Director

At the conclusion of the most divisive midterm election in memory, “Blue America” is riding a state of ballot-driven euphoria, while “Red America” licks its wounds and prepares for its next battle in two years. Election 2018, like those of the previous quarter century, falls into the fractured paradigm framed by Mark Gerzon in his 2016 book The Reunited States of America, where “liberals are right, and if elected, will strengthen America.” The 1994, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2014, and 2016 elections reversed this tired narrative, substituting “conservative” for “liberal.”

These winner-solves-all mantras have instead produced policy paralysis and political polarization at levels unseen since the Civil War. For 2018 to represent a departure, Tuesday’s victors and all citizens must instead embrace the precept that “Americans can work together with people different than (them)selves to find common ground that can strengthen the country we all love.”

Early returns for students taking the new required civics course offer strong evidence that students embrace Gerzon’s preferred third path. Across racial and ethnic groups, a strong majority of students surveyed last spring agreed or strongly agreed with the notion that by working with others in the community, they could affect positive change (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: By working with others
in the community, we can help make things better

(percent agree/ strongly
agree)

While dysfunction and stalemate characterize the policy environment in Washington and many state capitals, Springfield included, signs of democratic revival spring eternal at the local level. James and Deborah Fallows penned a marvelous tome titled Our Towns that documents their four-year journey to cities across the fruited plain. In places as geographically and politically polar as Burlington, VT, and Greenville, SC, they find common elements of a better future that disavows our toxic national political discourse and instead embraces our founding creed of e pluribus unum.

These local revitalization efforts are led by local champions the Fallows label “patriots", a plethora of public-private partnerships that embody the best elements of progressive and conservative positions relative to these two sectors, and a common local narrative of civic revival. These cities have revitalized downtowns, are often home to research universities and/ or community colleges and innovative K-12 schools, are welcoming to new residents, and have big plans for continued evolution and growth. Deborah Fallows also surfaces the centrality of local libraries to these communities, modernized hubs of civic energy welcome to all residents.

Outside of Columbus, OH, Pittsburgh, PA, and Louisville, KY, the Fallows visited and profiled medium-to-small towns, so the translation of their findings to a city the size of Chicago may be more difficult, yet there are elements of universality. Moreover, although they did not touch down in the Land of Lincoln, they did mention both Batavia and Moline as future sites for exploration. I would add the Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana areas to their itinerary.

Are you a “patriot” for your local community? Do you know its civic narrative? And how can you and your students transcend the dueling zero sum national narratives of the left of right to contribute to democratic revival from the bottom up?

On September 27, 2018, I had the privilege and opportunity to attend a workshop at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie entitled “Inquiry as Engagement: Empowering Students to Take a Stand,” which was facilitated by Mary Ellen Daneels of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. This workshop was great for many reasons, from the topic and presentations being interesting, to finally having some ideas on how to incorporate the new Illinois Civics standards into my teaching, it was three of the best hours of PD I have had in a while!

The new Civics standards that the state of Illinois has begun to mandate have felt rather overwhelming when teaching 8th grade due to them being written in such an open manner without a lot of specific focus in many cases. Having that much leeway is the same as having too many good food options on a restaurant menu because it makes it so difficult to know which option is the best. Mary Ellen Daneels did a great job of making me feel far more comfortable with what the standards are really looking for and giving approachable ways to deal with the standards.

We had the opportunity to work in small groups to look at what makes a good essential question and what does not. We also learned about organizations such as the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and illinoiscivics.org to help with resources and planning for seamlessly bringing the standards to our students in a meaningful and useful way.

Also, as part of the PD, we had the chance to spend time with Amanda Friedman of the Illinois Holocaust Museum on a tour of the Take a Stand Center within the Museum. The exhibit allows for teachers to bring students through several different sections to learn what people of all ages, races, genders, nationalities, religions, ethnicities, and abilities have done to make the world a better place. All of the sections are designed to be interactive and hands on to keep the kids engaged in the learning. Furthermore, this exhibit is inspiring and encouraging to those students who feel motivated to make a change to make the world a better place. It helps to show them that they are not alone in wanting to do this.

If you ever have the chance to work with either of these amazing organizations I would strongly encourage you to do so as I was able to learn so much in such a short amount of time!